A computer device can be configured to receive input of text and characters from a computer keyboard. Modern computer keyboards are composed of rectangular or near-rectangular keys, and characters, such as the letters A-Z in the English alphabet, are usually engraved or printed on the keys. In most cases, each press of a key corresponds to typing of a single character.
Traditional computer keyboards may sometimes be too large for portable devices, such as cellular phones, MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3 (MP3) players, or personal digital assistants (PDAs). Some portable devices include a smaller version of the traditional computer keyboard or use a virtual keyboard to receive user input. A virtual keyboard can be of the form of a software application or a feature of a software application to simulate a computer keyboard. For example, in a stylus-operated PDA or a touch-sensitive display on a communication device, a virtual keyboard can be used by a user to input text by selecting or tabbing keys of the virtual keyboard
These smaller keyboards and virtual keyboards may have keys that correspond to more than one character. For example, some of the keys can, by default, correspond to a common character in the English language, for example, the letter “a,” and may also correspond to other additional characters, such as another letter or the letter with an accent option, e.g., the character “ä,” or other characters with accent options. Because of the physical limitations (e.g., size) of the virtual keyboard, a user may find it difficult to type characters not readily available on the virtual keyboard.
Input methods for devices having multi-language environments can present unique challenges with respect to input and spelling correction which may need to be tailored to the selected language to ensure accuracy and an efficient workflow.